Jumping the Fretboard – Part 1.
June Moris April 20, 2009 - 6:59 pm .
Introduction.
Do you play mostly at the top of the neck in the same position?
How many different positions do you know for the chords C, E or G?
Maybe you’ve tried this :
With your band you’re playing a song that has this one really nice chord somewhere around the tenth fret. The problem is you can’t get it to sound good because you’re always late as the chord right before this one needs to be played at the top of the neck. By the time you manage to play the chord some strings give no more than a muted sound.
If you know this scenario I have a nice exercise for you. It will use a technique that will speed up your progress like you never imagined. The benefits are endless. Not only will you easily control the fretboard, the creative possibilities you gain will never exhaust and your music will sound so much richer. Your music will be so much better.
Stop being late.
Let’s say your song has a new chord every new bar. If you start focusing on playing the chord every new bar you will always be late because that is the time you should be playing the chord. The solution is to prepare yourself for every chord you play by knowing exactly its position, fingering, duration and dynamic before its playing time. When exactly you should prepare depends on how much ahead you can workout in your mind. At the latest you should start at the moment you are playing the chord right before because your mind then has nothing else to do.
Even though you don’t need to know a ton of chords to get started, it’s a very good idea to start expanding your chord memory. It will make things so much easier as you work on mastering the technique.
Exercise 1 : Reduce the distance between chords.
The exercise is to practice moving from one position on the fret board to any other position. The purpose is to keep the time to cross the distance between two chords to a minimum no matter how big the distance. Since it’s most difficult to cross a big distance that will be exactly what we’re going to practice. This way crossing any smaller distance will be easy.
For this exercise we will play two chords E and A. The picture below shows you the position for each chord. You will play A at the 12th fret.
At this point there is no time signature. We will play E first and than A. The main focus is on knowing exactly where to put each finger of the second chord before releasing the first chord.
Play E now by strumming or picking the strings. While you are playing E you can start focusing on the next chord(A). Look at its position already at fret 12. You should know exactly where to put each finger. This is very important because then your hand and fingers will automatically get into position as you arrive without hesitating.
!Common mistake: You’re looking at your hand while it’s moving and searching for the right position. You should keep your eyes on the next position. Your hand will follow.
As the hand moves towards the second chord it remains relaxed. Don’t play the next chord already in the air putting your fingers in position. Release E, relax the hand and move it fast towards to the next position. Play the chord A.
Repeat this until you can comfortably play the 2 chords.
Exercise 2 : Reduce the distance between chords.
In this exercise we will play first A and then E. Use the same positions as
before(hit the back button to come back to this page) and follow the same procedure as above.
Again repeat the exercise until your hand finds the second position without searching across the board. To go one step further now play E first followed by A followed by E. Here we have our first chord progression. We can consider the first chord as the first chord of the scale E. Than A will be the fourth chord so we’ll have a simple I-IV-I progression in the key of E.
Exercise 3 : Including time signature.
In this part we will focus on playing using time signature. Being an advanced player it is assumed that you are already familiar with the concept of time signature.
You’re pretty comfortable switching chords and crossing the distance on the fret board. Now you will do this in time. How does that work. To keep it simple we are playing in 4/4 . The chord progression is I-IV-I or E-A-E. We’ll play one chord per bar so every chord has 4 counts. Every chord is played on the one count or the first beat. Start with E and everything is fine so far. As soon as you play E you will focus on A. Look on the fret board at its position and know exactly where to put each finger.
!You have to know all this BEFORE A’s time is up in this case before the one. A is 3 to 4 beats away which will give you plenty of time. Again don’t play fast yet. Use a tempo in which you can comfortably play each chord without being late while counting as you play. Later you can speed up.
Part two will cover the different positions of one chord.
